Biography

"The soul is not digital."

Lara Porzak is an American photographer living and working in Los Angeles. She exclusively works with analog methods, carefully curated to convey the emotion she wishes to express. Her cameras and developing techniques, requiring great technical mastery, date back to the 19th century (tintypes, gelatin silver lith, wet collodion...).

 

The artist is particularly attached to the materiality of "handmade" photography and seeks to bring out its original magnetism. She poetically captures universal subjects, such as landscapes, revealing their timeless nature. Likewise, she plays on the ambiguity between abstraction and figuration through her practice of soft focus and deliberately expressive tintypes, evoking distant and ever longing imprints of beauty. As the Los Angeles Times aptly described it, "her photojournalistic style combines with the romantic influences of European photographers from the 1930s and 1940s to give her work a timeless quality with a strong sense of narrative”. Her photographs have notably joined the J. Paul Getty Museum collections.

Works
  • Lara Porzak, Billi Bird, 2011
    Billi Bird, 2011
  • Lara Porzak, Laurel Canyon Palm, 2015
    Laurel Canyon Palm, 2015
  • Lara Porzak, Shell, 2015
    Shell, 2015
  • Lara Porzak, Atlas Moth, 2015
    Atlas Moth, 2015
  • Lara Porzak, Big Sur, 2017
    Big Sur, 2017
  • Lara Porzak, Copper Glow, Lake Study, 2019
    Copper Glow, Lake Study, 2019
  • Lara Porzak, Desert Varnish, Lake Study, 2019
    Desert Varnish, Lake Study, 2019
  • Lara Porzak, Desert Lily, 2019
    Desert Lily, 2019
  • Lara Porzak, Beauty from the Rain, 2019
    Beauty from the Rain, 2019
  • Lara Porzak, First Flight, 2020
    First Flight, 2020
  • Lara Porzak, Aunt Judy's Garden, 2011
    Aunt Judy's Garden, 2011
  • Lara Porzak, Carrera, 2014
    Carrera, 2014
  • Lara Porzak, Cookie Jar, Lake Study, 2019
    Cookie Jar, Lake Study, 2019
  • Lara Porzak, Flair, 2014
    Flair, 2014
  • Lara Porzak, Flutterby, 2014
    Flutterby, 2014
  • Lara Porzak, Hail, Mount Wilson, 2021
    Hail, Mount Wilson, 2021
Exhibitions
Video